"Talk, Text, Crash" Campaign in San Angelo

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) brought its “Talk, Text, Crash” campaign to San Angelo today. The program strives to persuade drivers to stray from distracted driving, especially texting and driving.

“It’s a growing trend that serious accidents in the state of Texas are listing distracted driving as the cause,” district engineer of TxDOT for the San Angelo Area Tracy Cain said. “This is a public education campaign that’s going across the state and trying to draw attention to those dangers. Just trying to modify driver behavior.”

Among the speakers at today’s event at Central High School was Leesa Summerford, who lost her son Dustin due to another’s distracted driving.

“Dustin was very important to me,” Summerford said. “He impacted a lot of people. And if I can make an impact on somebody, if I can save one life, if I can help one person put down the phone, that’s what’s important.”

The Texas Transportation institute states that nearly 45 percent of Texas drivers admitted to using a cell phone while driving. However, 83 percent agreed that driving while talking on cell phones is dangerous.

“I’d say that studies suggest that distracted driving is similar in risk to drunk driving, Cain said. “Really, most of us wouldn’t think about getting drunk and operating that motor vehicle, but a lot of us will [drive distracted].”

TxDOT stated that there were 288 crashes last year due to driver inattention, which resulted in five serious injuries. Across Texas, however, there were 100,917 distracted-driving crashes; these resulted in 483 fatalities and more than 3,000 serious injuries.

“We’re just trying to draw attention to the fact that [distracted driving] is a significant risk and that people are making a choice that could affect the rest of their life and a bunch of other folks’ lives if they’re choosing to drive while distracted.”

According to Summerford, this is the first time she’s spoken to the public about the dangers of distracted driving; she said that this event was a “milestone” for her.

“I want to keep Dustin’s memory alive and I want to keep his memory alive in a good way,” Summerford said.

TxDOT claims that distracted riving causes almost 1 in 5 traffic accidents in Texas. Furthermore, distracted-driving crashes increased by 6 percent last year in Texas.

“We’re not talking just about cell phone use,” Cain said. :Anything that you do that takes your attention away from the driving task, whether it’s eating or messing with the radio or doing your GPS, anything that takes your attention away from that very important driving task is distracted driving.”

Jarret Voorhies, a teenage race car driver from Fort worth, also spoke at the event.

“[Distracted drivers] just need to realize that nobody’s above it and until we all stop, nobody’s safe from it,” Voorhies said. “You know, it could be yourself, it could be somebody else who gets hurt from it.”

According to Summerford, the other young man involved in the accident had received his driver’s license three months ago and was out past curfew. However, he did not have to serve any jail time for the accident.

“No parent should have to deal with their child being gone. No parent should receive the phone call at 2 o’clock in the morning that their child is not coming home. Hug your babies, hug your moms, hug your brothers, hug your sisters. Because you never know when you leave that they’re not ever coming home again.”